“It is perfectly all right to tell me, Zoë,” Elliot whispered reassuringly. “Strath is a big, empty house. Sometimes I get lonely, and I just wondered if, perhaps, you did, too.”
“Miss Smith tells me I must be grateful that I have a home,” answered Zoë reluctantly. “And because I am allowed to stay here, she says I must work very hard on my studies and be very good. I should not complain or cause trouble.”
Elliot made a mental note to discharge Miss Smith directly after breakfast. “Zoë,” he whispered, chucking her softly under the chin with his knuckle. “I love you, and your home will always be with me, regardless of whether you are bad or good, silly or smart. Did you not understand that?”
Mutely, the little girl shook her head, her chestnut curls tumbling loose to glint in the candlelight. Elliot looked at her and felt true shame. Despite his belated determination to be a better father, fear and insecurity, two emotions no child should suffer, still tormented his child. And it was his fault. Awkwardly, Elliot leaned forward and pulled her tiny frame to his chest, wrapping his arms around her as if he feared she might vanish in the night. It was often thus with Zoë. To Elliot, it was as if she did not belong on this earth, let alone in this house, and now he feared that she might feel it, too.
She was like a delicate feather, this daughter of his. “I love you, Zoë,” he whispered again, this time into her curls. And I wish I could be a better papa. But I am afraid and ignorant and frozen inside. Those words he did not say. Instead, Elliot held his tongue and after a long moment forced himself to lessen his grip and pull away. It was too much; he did not wish to frighten her. Or himself.
The Great Subscription Room of Brooks’s was awash in the haut monde. Tonight, England’s nobility and gentry mingled, shoulder to shoulder, about the gaming tables and throughout the adjoining card room, as they did almost every evening, in season and out. Elliot arrived late, and in an exceedingly ill humor. He did not want to drink and gamble; he wanted to stay at Strath House and wallow in the misery of what his life might have been like.
Nonetheless, he could not do so. He had given his word to Winthrop, in a vain attempt to end last night’s mind-numbing barrage of questions about where and with whom he had been keeping himself. Evangeline did not deserve the kind of mischievous havoc Major Winthrop, Lord Linden, and Sir Hugh were capable of wreaking, and he knew perfectly well that his cronies would not hesitate to have him followed should their curiosity get the better of them.
Pray God they had not already done so. Elliot had not missed the significance of society’s interest in his antics. Winnie Weyden’s little scandal rag had taken a year or two off his life, and he knew perfectly well that either Hugh or Linden had been responsible for the printing of such drivel.
With a weary sigh, Elliot strode through the rooms searching for his uncle. As they invariably did, everyone stepped quickly from his path, even those few who, according to the strictures of English society, outranked him. It had always been thus; men either averted their eyes or nodded reverently, depending upon their preferences, but no one looked him in the eye. No one sat down with him absent an invitation. No one challenged him to play or duel without great forethought. And no one ever, ever laughed at him to his face.
Not anymore.
Just inside the card room, Hugh and the others had already taken a table, as well as a bottle, and sat in impatient readiness. Elliot slipped into his seat without comment, and Hugh filled his glass. Slowly, Elliot eased into the rhythms of the game. This one was for sport, not money. Elliot never took advantage of his friends, and Winthrop and Linden were the best of friends, steadfast and true, despite their incessant efforts to appear otherwise. The play was fast, and the conversation desultory, for the better part of an hour.
“Well, well!” boomed an obnoxiously jovial voice. Lord Barton, a club regular, approached their table. “Here’s a nasty pit of vipers, indeed! Huddled all together tonight, gentlemen?” He paused just inside the salon, his florid face split in a wide grin, a nearly empty wine glass in hand. “Have you no innocent victims as yet?”
Elliot lifted his gaze from the table to eye the newcomer grimly. “There is no such thing as an innocent victim in this sport, Barton. You know it well.”
“Nonetheless, the night is young,” drawled the dandified Linden enticingly as he finished dealing with a sharp snap. The blond viscount cut a shrewd glance up at the visitor. “Care to join us, Barton?”
“Hah! I’m hardly such a dotard as all that, Linden. The four of you can sell your souls for someone else’s gold this evening.”
“Have you a suggestion, my lord?” asked Major Winthrop dryly, never bothering to lift his gaze from his and. “Who among us looks plump in the purse tonight?”
Casually, Lord Barton raised a bejeweled quizzing glass to survey the busy room, then gestured with his wine glass through the doorway toward the gaming alon. “Yonder stands young Carstairs. He is eager, rich, and I daresay rather ignorant. Try your luck at—” Barton paused to narrow his gaze, grunting disdainfully. “No, never mind, gentlemen. Poor lad has just become carrion to the new Baron Cranham. They’ve fallen in together even as I speak.”
“Cranham, eh?” Sir Hugh’s voice was gruff. “What the devil is this club about, I should like to know? Letting such a one slip through the doors! Why, the very purpose of this club is undermined by permitting the likes of him to crawl in off the street and taint—”
“Good God, Hugh!” Elliot barked as Lord Barton drifted away. “You sound as supercilious and sanctimonious as Mother. I marvel that you don’t sprout angel wings right on the spot.”
Major Winthrop looked at Elliot strangely, then lowered his gaze to his hand. “None of us has more cause to hate Cranham than do you, Rannoch,” he murmured speculatively. “What I wonder is why you haven’t called him out already.”
Elliot regarded his dark-haired companion in silence for a long moment. “I want no quarrel with Cranham, Winthrop. I challenged him ten years ago, and he fled. He knows his own shame. ’Tis done.”
Sir Hugh snorted derisively, then just as quickly hushed when he noted Elliot’s hard glare. “I plan to mind my own business,” added Elliot, the cold finality unmistakable in his tone, “and I suggest, gentlemen, that the rest of you do the same.”
And so he did. For the better part of two hours, Elliot inded his own business. He was not, however, fool enough to take his eyes from Cranham. With a discreet vigilance, Elliot watched the enemy. The new baron seemed unaware of Elliot’s presence in the room, but Elliot sensed that it was not so.
Cranham and Carstairs had drifted nearer and now stood only a few feet away, observing a heated game of hazard. Cranham was already known to be under the hatches financially, and the pair had been drinking prodigiously since midnight, a combination that, in Elliot’s opinion, inevitably bode ill for someone. Both gentlemen were now well in their cups, but Cranham was showing signs of serious intoxication. With any luck at all, Elliot ruefully considered, his old adversary might just drink himself to death and save someone else the trouble of killing him.
Suddenly, Hugh flung his cards onto the table. “Well, that’s it, gentlemen. Much afraid I’m all in.”
“Agreed,” said Lord Linden, sweeping up the table. “Call for your carriage, Winthrop. Let us all go down to Madame Claire’s and get a private room and some champagne! She has a brace of buxom new lasses, one of whom can reputedly suck the brass off a cheap candlestick.”
“Aye, well, I’ve a cheap enough one for her right here,” suggested Hugh with a leer, waggling his grizzled brows enthusiastically.
Major Winthrop lifted one dark eyebrow skeptically. “I don’t know, old chaps. Perhaps we might try—”
Elliot shoved his chair back with a harsh scrape. “I do not share women,” he said irritably, his voice a low growl.
From the table just inside the adjoining salon, someone cleared his throat with apparent deliberation. “One does not always have a say in such
matters, Lord Rannoch.” The tone was contemptuous but unsteady. “For example, you shared Antoinette Fontaine, and quite generously, too. But, then, perhaps you were unaware of your hospitality?”
Elliot heard the unmistakable voice, rose calmly from the table, then crossed the narrow space between them. Cranham’s insult had not been unexpected. In fact, it had been almost anticlimactic, and Elliot was glad to have done with the opening salvo. As he had known all along, it was inevitable that he would have to kill the bastard. He was not happy about it, but Cranham would insist.
Beside him, his friends and his uncle shifted uneasily in their chairs, but they did not rise. Elliot was more than capable of handling the new baron, and they knew it. Elliot eyed Cranham derisively. “As it happens, Moore,” he answered dryly, deliberately omitting his title, “I want no quarrel with you, and I hope you enjoyed Miss Fontaine. She is a far better class of whore than the last one we very nearly shared.”
Behind him, Lord Linden burst out into a snicker. The crowd around Cranham nervously dispersed, leaving the gentlemen to their argument. Cranham’s face flamed with rage. “How dare you insult my—my—”
“Your what?” asked Elliot silkily. “Your taste in women?”
Cranham brandished his fist in Elliot’s face. “You weren’t fit to lick the ground Cicely Forsythe trod upon, you ignorant Scot! I’ll not stand by whilst you impugn her, damn you!”
Elliot widened his eyes and arched his brows deliberately. “Lick the ground she trod upon? Come, come, now, Cranham! That’s doing it a bit too brown! I may be an inveterate blackguard, I’ll grant you that, but as I recollect, the only ground Cicely was about to tread upon was the path to the altar. On my arm, with your bastard in her belly.”
“You’re a damned liar, Rannoch! You took her innocence, then abandoned her. I loved her, and she loved me.”
“Aye, and some believe fairy folk roam the Highlands,” muttered Elliot with a toss of his hand. Slowly, he turned to walk away.
“I would have wed her,” rasped Cranham.
“Would you have, indeed?” asked Elliot softly. He spun back around to face Cranham. “How regrettable that there was not merely one but two social obligations forestalled by your untimely departure for Bombay.”
Cranham, red-faced and almost slavering now, took a step toward Elliot and began to jab one finger at his chest. “She wanted to marry me, damn you to hell! Her uncle forbade it because I was poor and untitled! My father had me bound, gagged, and shipped off, just to spare his family the embarrassment. You bloody well know that’s true.”
Elliot felt a flicker of sympathy for the drunken, irate man who stood before him. “The latter may possibly be true, Cranham, but I pray you will not lie to yourself about what Cicely wanted. Her desperate uncle would have cheerfully wed her to a Covent Garden costermonger. It was Cicely who made a coldly calculated gamble on my goodwill and lost.”
“She gambled, and she died, Rannoch,” hissed Cranham. He was standing on his toes, staring into Elliot’s face now. “She died because you ruined her and turned her away. And sooner or later, so help me God, you will pay for it!”
“Go home, Cranham,” replied Elliot sadly, having lost what little enthusiasm he had had for the argument. “Go home and sober up and get on with your life, as I have had to do. Leave me in peace.” He turned his back on Cranham, crossed back into the card room, and slid into his chair.
“Damn your impudence, Rannoch!” rasped Cranham, following him to his seat. “I shall not be so easily dismissed.”
“Nonetheless, you are,” replied Elliot, absently shuffling the cards. “Dismissed, that is.”
In an apparent rage, Cranham grabbed the cards from his hand and sprayed them across the table. “Go ahead, you hulking Scots bastard! Call me out again—and this time I shall kill you.”
“No,” said Elliot quietly. Methodically, he began to gather up the deck. Major Winthrop and Lord Linden shot discreet, bewildered glances across the table and began to shove the strewn cards toward him. Sir Hugh merely tilted his chair backward on its rear legs to better view the fray.
“Go ahead,” snarled Cranham. “I insist.”
“Upon what?” asked Elliot, suddenly intent upon the cards. “Why should I trouble myself to challenge you when I cannot expect that you will keep your dawn appointments?”
“Go to hell,” hissed Cranham, struggling to peel away his glove, then whipping it in Elliot’s face. “I issue the challenge, Rannoch! My seconds will wait upon you tomorrow.” He spun on one heel and began to walk away, but Elliot rose from the table and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Drop it, Cranham! Perhaps we were both ill used. Most assuredly, I have no lingering urge to fight you.” Elliot bit out the words coldly. “Withdraw your challenge now, and I shall gladly accept.”
“No,” replied Cranham quietly, sounding suddenly sober.
“As you wish.” Elliot nodded brusquely, then unclamped his hand from Cranham’s shoulder. “Send your seconds to Major Winthrop now. ’Tis half past one. As the challenged, I would have this deal done at first light. One shot, with pistols. Have you any objection?”
“None whatsoever,” snapped his adversary.
Evangeline rose from her bed and pulled on her wrapper in the dark. Sleep had been slow to come and, when it had arrived, had lingered but briefly. This time, her restlessness had little to do with Elliot. It was a problem far more dire.
From her bedside table, she grabbed the letter that had arrived by afternoon post and shoved it into her pocket. Slowly, she made her way down the stairs and into the library, pausing to light a candle in the corridor as she went. The hallway lamp reminded her yet again of Elliot’s harsh, handsome face as he bent down to light his cheroot only a few days earlier.
No! It simply would not do. She could not think of him. Not now. Not when Michael’s happiness might well depend upon her. Quietly, she stole into the library and pushed shut the door. Taking her usual chair, she read the note once more, searching for some measure of hope, but the words were as clear by candlelight as they had been by the light of day.
Her grandfather was dying. In Peter Weyden’s absence, her solicitor had written to warn her that Lord Trent’s death was imminent. The doctors had left Cambert Hall some three days past, sending for the bishop himself as they went. It was consumption, and it was believed that this time he would surely die.
Her grandfather had always been a weak man, in every way save the physical. Was he now to fail his grandchildren in this way, too? Wearily, Evangeline sighed and pushed back her long rope of hair. Perhaps she attached far too much emphasis to her grandfather’s passing. In truth, he had been almost powerless for years and therefore as good as dead to his domineering second wife. Why should his actual demise make any difference? But it would. Evangeline knew it. There was such finality to death; one could not help but think of those who had gone before, of what would never be, and of those who remained to constitute the future.
And her fatuous uncle would be the next earl! Certainly, she could not depend upon him for support. Indeed, he would be cajoled and browbeaten into playing the puppet for his stepmother, for without him Lady Trent would be no more than a dowager. Yes, after her husband’s death, her power base would be at risk, and she was astute enough to know it. But good God, Evange line’s uncle was as weak and ineffectual as her grandfather had been. Was the whole lot of Stone men both spineless and complaisant? Evangeline felt a wave of guilt and bit her lip until she tasted the metallic tang of blood. Her hands shook as she leaned forward to lay the letter on the desk.
No, that was certainly not the case. The younger son, her uncle Frederick, had given his life for his king and country. Nor had her father been a coward. He had been sensitive. Yes, and resolute enough to give up everything to wed the woman he loved. Yet if her father had been the vivacity of their family, her mother had been its strength, and without it they had very nearly collapsed. Maxwell Stone had been a gifted artist
who had loved his wife so deeply that he had been unable to recover from her loss. It had not been weakness; it had been uncontrollable grief. Evangeline refused to see it any other way, and she had never begrudged her father the peace death had finally brought him or resented the promise she had given to her mother. By example, Marie van Artevalde had taught Evangeline that it was the woman’s duty to hold the family together no matter the cost.
Evangeline had inherited whatever artistic skill she possessed from both of her brilliant parents, but from her mother she had received her blond elegance and something far more valuable: a healthy dose of rocksolid Flemish pragmatism. She set about using it now. The danger posed by Lady Trent was not imminent. This was England. One could hardly be kidnapped from one’s bed in the dark of night. Evangeline knew that she could stall for time, for weeks, probably months. On the morrow, she would write to her solicitor and instruct him to begin considering the legal arguments that would inevitably be needed. Only after all options were approaching exhaustion would she take Michael back to their homeland, where they would remain, in hiding if necessary, until her step-grandmother joined her husband in the family tomb.
Her mind raced through the plan she had repeated over and over in her head. She and Michael could flee on a moment’s notice. Winnie and the remaining children could follow at their leisure, for no one would bother to hinder them. The wars were over at last, and Evangeline knew a dozen ways to get in and out of France and Flanders. Moreover, her parents had had friends in every province. She spoke six languages fluently, and Michael spoke four. They could easily pass for French, Swiss, or Austrian. Among the throng of Continental émigrés driven into England by Napoleon, she and Peter Weyden could count many friends and business contacts. It would not be difficult to hide and, ultimately, to escape.
It would, however, be painful. Once again, Evangeline knew that she must keep her promise to her mother, but this time it would hurt all the more. This time, she would be leaving her heart behind in England. After judiciously avoiding one potential suitor after another, she had unwittingly succumbed to the charms of Elliot Roberts, a man about whom she knew almost nothing. She had fallen hopelessly in love with him, a fact she admitted only to herself. Despite the short time she had known him, her desire had already become a private hell which melted to a sweet, exquisite torment whenever he was near. Although she was uncertain about Elliot’s feelings for her, to be alone in Europe, never to see him again, would still be pure agony.
Liz Carlyle - [Lorimer Family & Clan Cameron 02] Page 15